未许可频谱的LTE测试

LTE Unlicensed—The Opportunity and the Challenges

The growing need for capacity and the diminishing amount of unused spectrum has generated interest in tapping into the unlicensed spectrum for LTE i.e. LTE unlicensed. There is considerable activity and interest relevant to LTE unlicensed across the entire industry:

Others—End user applications that might use Wi-Fi connectivity, or anyone using the same unlicensed spectrum, such as Bluetooth

There are different aspects to testing LTE unlicensed:

Conformance testing

Performance testing

Interoperability testing

Coexistence testing

Coexistence testing, perhaps the most critical focus in the industry right now, seeks to ensure that LTE unlicensed can coexist harmoniously with other technologies without affecting their performance. Coexistence means not just fair sharing among various LTE unlicensed networks but, even more importantly, coexistence of LTE unlicensed with other technologies such as Wi-Fi.

Spider™ Unlicensed

Spider™ Unlicensed is a fully automated, self-contained solution built on the Spider™ platform and designed specifically for testing LTE unlicensed.

The first version, geared toward the LTE-U, follows the LTE-U Forum’s supplementary downlink (SDL) coexistence test plan. Subsequent versions will focus on other flavors of LTE unlicensed such as LTE\LAA (License Assisted Access), LWA (LTE Wi-Fi aggregation), or test plans from other forums such as the Wi-Fi Alliance and 3GPP.

The Spider™ Unlicensed is a purpose-built yet flexible and scalable solution.